CARICOM wants slavery reparations

KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO |
2/13/2014, 11:21 a.m.

CARICOM

Leigh Day is still researching the case and preparing to give a presentation to CARICOM leaders regarding what moves to make next. Leigh Day & Co., which is self-described as a “law firm specializing in medical and personal injury, human rights, employment and discrimination,” most recently won 22 million pounds (some $36,089,000 million) in compensation for 1,300 Kenyan elders who had been tortured by the British during the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s. (The 2005 book “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya” by Caroline Elkins gives a record of how the British brutalized and dehumanized tens of thousands of Kenya’s Kikuyu/Mau Mau population in detention camps from 1952 until the war ended in 1960.)

When The Voice asked Day to comment on the fact that Mark Simmonds, Britain’s minister for the Caribbean, had recently stated that the British government would fight this reparations battle, Day replied: “I haven’t yet had a case where, at the beginning, the defendant—whoever that may be—turns round and says, ‘Yeah, we totally agree with you and are going to pay everything that you ask.’

“In any case, you expect a fight, so it’s for us to persuade the British government that they are wrong and that this is an issue that needs to be resolved now. I’m pretty optimistic that we can do that.”